To The Rescue

Your entrepreneurial education, with its teachings on marketing, business planning and financing, can do more than just help you start your own business: You can use your training to help other business owners in need.

Follow the lead of the MBA students at DePaul University: 16 students traveled to New Orleans last year to help local businesses recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than hand out supplies or build houses, these students decided to use their entrepreneurial training to help rebuild the city's business community. "With [our] various business backgrounds, I knew we could create a different kind of [program], where our contribution wasn't just labor," says Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, 26, founder of the DePaul Business Corps and the program's organizer and manager. "Instead, we viewed ourselves as a pro bono consulting group working on quarter-long client projects with New Orleans nonprofits and businesses--culminating in an eight-day trip for face-to-face work."